ollowed the soldier through the barbed wire that had been set up in
a half-mile circle around the leech. A company of soldiers was on guard
around it, keeping back the reporters and the hundreds of curious people
who had flocked to the scene. Micheals wondered why he was still allowed
inside. Probably, he decided, because most of this was taking place on
his land.

The soldier brought him to a tent. Micheals stooped and went in.
General O'Donnell, still in suntans, was seated at a small desk. He
motioned Micheals to a chair.

"I've been put in charge of getting rid of this leech," he said to
Micheals.

Micheals nodded, not commenting on the advisability of giving a soldier
a scientist's job.

"You're a professor, aren't you?"

"Yes. Anthropology."

"Good. Smoke?" The general lighted Micheals' cigarette. "I'd like you to
stay around here in an advisory capacity. You were one of the first to
see this leech. I'd appreciate your observations on--" he smiled--"the
enemy."

"I'd be glad to," Micheals said. "However, I think this is more in the
line of a physicist or a biochemist."

"I don't want this place cluttered with scientists," General O'Donnell
said, frowning at the tip of his cigarette. "Don't get me wrong. I have
the greatest appreciation for science. I am, if I do say so, a
scientific soldier. I'm always interested in the latest weapons. You
can't fight any kind of a war any more without science."

* * * * *

O'Donnell's sunburned face grew firm. "But I can't have a team of
longhairs poking around this thing for the next month, holding me up. My
job is to destroy it, by any means in my power, and at once. I am going
to do just that."

"I don't think you'll find it that easy," Micheals said.

"That's what I want you for," O'Donnell said. "Tell me why and I'll
figure out a way of doing it."

"Well, as far as I can figure out, the leech is an organic mass-energy
converter, and a frighteningly efficient one. I would guess that it has
a double cycle. First, it converts mass into energy, then back into mass
for its body. Second, energy is converted directly into the body mass.
How this takes place, I do not know. The leech is not protoplasmic. It
may not even be cellular--"

"So we need something big against it," O'Donnell interrupted. "Well,
that's all right. I've got some big stuff here."

"I don't think you understand me," Micheals said. "Perhaps I'm not
phrasing this